Tuesday, October 07, 2008

"With more super-sized banks in business, fewer failures could still dump a big bill on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.... The FDIC's potential liability is rising under a provision of the bailout that increases the deposit insurance limit to $250,000 per account, up from $100,000.

Using statistics from the S&L crisis as a guide, Mason estimates total deposits in banks that fail during the current crisis at $1.1 trillion. After calculating gains from selling deposits and some of the assets of the failed banks, Mason estimates the clean-up this time will cost the FDIC $140 billion to $200 billion.

The FDIC's fund currently has about $45 billion -- a five-year low -- but the agency can make up for any shortfalls by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury and eventually repaying the money by raising the premiums that it charges the healthy banks and S&Ls."